Philosophy Discussion Forums

Please post all introductions in this forum. Tell us how you found the philosophy forums, what interests you about philosophy, and a little about you, such as your age, where you live, what you do for a living, etc.

I'm a 24 year old male, and philosophy is my second great passion in life, the first one being music. The philosophers I look up to are Nietzsche, Spinoza, Buddha, Sextus Empiricus, Adorno and Lacan.

I believe that science completely depends on decent, systematic philosophical practice, and that epistemology cannot be separated from our ontological state of being. I accept the Buddhist notion of not-self, and I believe that all things are in a constant state of flux. I'd argue that the ten modes of Pyrrhonism are extremely useful for understanding the contextual difference between reality and truth; for that matter, I am so against all sorts humanisms. Ethically, I am a cognitivist; as I observe that nature is ontologically dialectical. I reject the concept of a-priori knowledge, and although I value psychoanalysis a lot, I label myself a philosophical naturalist.

I hope you do that vis-a-vis empirical knowledge, and you accept despite your statement that "I am Andrew or I am not Andrew" is a priori necessarily true.

But still... I also hope that you accept that your self, a physical entity, or cognitive entity, testable only by empirical means for existence, is an a priori existing unit, when you think... because if there was no you, there would be nothing to think. Ergo, you must exist (a priori knowledge).

And I also hope that you don't reject space, the three dimensional infinity, which is also a physical entity which can be known to exist without empirical testing, as an a priori knowledge applied to physical entities.

But still... I also hope that you accept that your self, a physical entity, or cognitive entity, testable only by empirical means for existence, is an a priori existing unit, when you think... because if there was no you, there would be nothing to think. Ergo, you must exist (a priori knowledge).

And I also hope that you don't reject space, the three dimensional infinity, which is also a physical entity which can be known to exist without empirical testing, as an a priori knowledge applied to physical entities.

I actually don't get what you mean. My dumb. (No joke. I don't get the reference, therefore I also don't get the meaning. I am not familiar with the quote; or the context of it; or its connotation. I am completely lost with what you could mean. Please help me out.)

Hi Epoche. Flux is once again being taken seriously by philosophers, most notably, but not always noticeably, by Wittgenstein - see his river analogy in On Certainty. Joseph Margolis in The Flux of History and the Flux of Science and elsewhere argues for the primacy of flux contra invariance and addresses the problem of how to think within flux.

I hope you do that vis-a-vis empirical knowledge, and you accept despite your statement that "I am Andrew or I am not Andrew" is a priori necessarily true.

Hey. Tautologies are necessarily true, but do they comprise knowledge? If knowledge is to be useful, it needs to identify or categorize or predict; and whatever is necessarily true can't be used for any of the above three porpoises.

"You can always live without a lover, but you can't love without a liver."